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36" Barrel Dome on a budget

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  • 36" Barrel Dome on a budget

    Hi all,
    I've taken a steel barrel, lined it with 1" bricks and flipped it over a 2'x3' engineered slab that my friend was going to install at a pizza restaurant. I don't know what it is, I've never built anything like this before and I don't have much money for this. I'm posting this to encourage others without much means to give it a crack. I'd love to hear your opinion on what might fail and what I should do differently.

    I don't have plans for what a final product will look like. I have covered the whole thing in lime plaster, a very rough first coat, though no pics yet.

    I used mismatch cinder blocks to build a base, and used Quickwall on the outside of the whole thing, not using any mortar on the blocks at all.

    I poured a slab in 3 separate layers, adding more insulation with each layer, and also laying down a few glass bottles under the stone. The stone I used for the cooking deck is the same size as the barrel I wanted to use, and seemed a shame not to match the sizes, and would simplify things, in many ways.

    The oven is probably a bit taller than I need i to be, but I am cranking out pizzas, and depending on how I have the coals and wood going, they cook in about 2-3 minutes. I get the deck to at least 500, and usually rake the coals over the deck between pizzas. The interior bricks register at 800 or so, most of the time. I had some heavy duty kiln bricks that I wanted to use, but my potter friend thought it would take too long to get the oven up to temp. He may have been right, though I now wonder what it would be like if I used them instead of the ones he gave me. The ceiling is lined with light duty fire bricks from a stone supply store. The walls are lined with these very light weight and easy to cut bricks from my potter friend. He used them in a kiln and they are literally almost like styrofoam. The ones I had were massive and heavy, and I actually did end up using them in a few places. My laser thermometer shows them both at about the same temp, most of the time.

    I'll post a few more pics as I learn this site a bit more. WARNING: If you used any kind of planning software on a computer, or are even beyond a novice at most trades related to WFO building, proceed at your own risk.
    Attached Files

  • #2
    Not sure how to turn these pictures...only some seem to have turned. I'm also using the camera icon here, so hopefully these are easier to view.

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